Weighting Competing Models

Chiara Aina and Florian H. Schneider
Additional contact information
Florian H. Schneider: Department of Economics, University of Copenhagen

No 25-04, CEBI working paper series from University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics. The Center for Economic Behavior and Inequality (CEBI)

Abstract: We study how individuals update their beliefs in the presence of competing datagenerating processes, or models, that could explain observed data. Through experiments, we identify the weights participants assign to different models and find that the most common updating rule gives full weight to the model that best fits the data. While some participants assign positive weights to multiple models—consistent with Bayesian updating—they often do so in a systematically biased manner. Moreover, these biases in model weighting frequently lead participants to become more certain about a state regardless of the data, violating a core property of Bayesian updating.

Keywords: Belief Updating; Narratives; Mental Models; Experiments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C90 D83 D9 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 140
Date: 2025-03-17
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econ.ku.dk/cebi/publikationer/working-papers/CEBI_WP_04-25.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Weighting Competing Models (2025)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kud:kucebi:2504

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEBI working paper series from University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics. The Center for Economic Behavior and Inequality (CEBI) Oester Farimagsgade 5, Building 26, DK-1353 Copenhagen K., Denmark. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Thomas Hoffmann ().